


the ghost of rockschool

by Gravekit, orphan_account



Category: Homestuck
Genre: AU, Body Horror, F/F, Genetic Experimentation, combustion/fire in relation to death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-24
Updated: 2012-06-24
Packaged: 2017-11-08 11:24:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,809
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/442693
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gravekit/pseuds/Gravekit, https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Aradia is a psychopomp, a guide for the dead - a demographic Jade has recently joined. However, Jade isn't ready to move on for her own reasons. Bargaining ensues.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the ghost of rockschool

**Author's Note:**

> Accompanying art by retraux! [Beginning](http://i.imgur.com/v6w6Q.png) and [end](http://i.imgur.com/YVjIa.png).

The stars twinkle and whisper above her, but in the end, Aradia is alone. It's been like this since her birth-- creation? how do things like her even come into being? --, and so the sting is dulled, sharp edges rounded off. Company would be nice, though, she thinks, very definitely. Something other than the monsters of her kind, with the twisted boney faces that reflect her own. But she was made to _be_ company on the Long Journey, not to have it, and her purpose is undeniable.

So it goes, night after night: Aradia holds the hands of lost souls but never for long enough.

**✝**

Today is the day Jade Harley dies. She is unaware of this but even if she were she would likely be no less blissfully unafraid as already she is this afternoon! To be precise: a blistering Sunday, tail-end of June. Sunlight wraps itself a-glowing around the curves of every vial in her lab and her world gleams, a stainless steel constellation buried in brick, eaten in ivy, a futuristic metal monstrosity forgotten by the world, and that is just how Jade likes it. Loneliness is an unfortunate factor but a manageable one--certainly of less importance than intellectual growth! And the company of humans has never done anything but disregard hers, perhaps even outright stifle it. So it goes. Jade lives undiscovered and will die undiscovered, and so it goes.

In the end, its hard to pinpoint what exactly is the breaking point--or rather, maybe, burning point. She could hardly sniff it out, after all. If it were any other experiment, maybe she would have lived? Such an odd thing to think. But, alas. It was the olfactory epithelium alteration, and so the scent receptors in her nose are greatly impaired, and so she does not.

Faulty wiring, she supposes. A chemical spill. Behind her, electricity coughs, startles, shudders. She hears before anything else, ears as finely tuned as they are: hears a snap-jaw crackling already at her feet, a spark of flame. Against her fur on the ankle of her right leg, she feels a singe. Jade freezes, thinks a hundred things at once--thinks: shit, that hurt!--turns her head against her shoulder to look back, and feels warmth crawl up into her at a fearfully abrupt rate. Everything lights up with an unnatural glow, faster and brighter, an underground sun collapsing, a momentary birth of stars spread across every square inch of the universe. Thinks: shit. 

(And I wasn't even _done_.)

**✝**

The murder of crows caw harshly, rousing Aradia from her sleep-not-sleep. To sleep, perchance to dream, someone Above once said, but she can't even manage the first step. The largest of the corvids settles comfortably on her shoulder, pointed beak picking through her curled hair.

"Have you something to say?" she asks as she reaches up to pet its glossy feathers. She's answered with another sharp call before the bird goes back to hopping around, seeking attention. An assignment, it said, a young girl the age she would be if she were alive. Combustion. Burns. Electrical shock. And mutations? No, those were there pre-mortem: furred ears and digitigrade legs, toeing the line of more canine than human.

Something, someone, unafraid of the strange.

Aradia rises to don her robes, lipless mouth in a smile, and, for once, she thinks: maybe she can make this one stay.

**✝**

"So I'm dead?" The girl tilts her head to the side, a fittingly canine gesture, previously-wagging tail slowing to a halt and ears drooping. The news is hard for anyone to take -- but Aradia's head isn't in the game right now. The newcomer hasn't given her a single strange glance, much less shrieked at her skeletal face, and it warms her unbeating heart. An idea has been churning through her head since her arrival, spinning around, forming itself ...

"I'm afraid so," she answers, giving a sympathetic smile. "Really, though, it's not as bad as people make it out to be! It's honestly quite pleasant, if I do say so."

Jade exhales, a ratty sigh, kicking a paw in the ground. Dust skitters around her legs. "Really, it wouldn't be a problem if I hadn't been in the middle of something!"

"Death waits for nothing and no-one."

Jade crosses her arms stubbornly, brow furrowed. "Let's make a deal, then! Aren't your kind supposed to be up to that?"

Aradia shifts back and forth on her feet, considering. She's never had an assignment bring this up before; usually, they're either actually relieved to have passed on or too wrapped up in angst and disbelief to even reach the "bargaining" stage. This wasn't covered in her formal training. But she's heard stories of those before her, manipulating and twisting the rules for themselves.

This could work out to her benefit.

"Well," she says smoothly, thoughtfully, "I could give you enough time to finish ... whatever you were doing. Barred, of course, that you don't get _blown up_ again --"

"--hey!--"

"-- but it's conditional. I can't just give the chance to you; you have to earn it. A gamble for your life, if you're willing to take it."

Jade throws her hands up into the air, exasperated. "And how am I supposed to do that? I don't know anything about being dead! If you hadn't realized, I sort of don't have any experience with this!"

"Calm down. I was just about to tell you."

**✝**

It's different than the legends Aradia's heard. For one, Jade is already dead, and if she wins, she doesn't get a golden _anything_ ; simply another day or week of humanity to tie off loose ends.

But if she loses, Aradia will have a companion. It's selfish, she knows--painfully, _shamefully_ , selfish--not allowing a soul to move on quite all the way to the Other Side, keeping it stuck in-between in the land of her kind, but it's the only way to make sure she'll stay. (She's unsure if she'd hold it up anyway. It feels like a sort of false security, thinking there is any sort of a chance that it could work. In all her time here she has learned but the basics of supposed human empathy, and feels little draw to it, save for the professional need of a bedside manner, so to speak--but the facts are, Jade's skin is still warm. Work comes first.)

Another thing is that she doesn't quite recall the other contestant using a bass guitar, but Jade insists upon it, a mortal hang-on; hardly traditional but times change, Aradia reasons. She'll stick with her fiddle, just like in the tale, and hope for the best.

**✝**

Jade beats her by a long shot.

Aradia tells her goodbye and arranges for her to have another guide the next time she comes around. It hurts much worse than she had thought it would, but she remembers _so it goes_.

**✝**

A week later, Aradia wakes up to a rough tongue licking at the bone of her face, and she shrieks, nearly falling off the slab that serves as her resting place. In the process, she startles what appears to be her new -- and familiar -- companion, all white ears and tail and big green eyes.

She'd come back.

"You could have just asked, you know," Jade says, tail sweeping against Aradia's robes as she smiles a sly, toothy grin. "Like, 'hey, yeah, go get your stuff done! But maybe you can give me some company after?' It would have been easy! But nah, you had to be all silly and psychopomp-y."

Aradia stares, dumbfounded, mouth slightly agape.

"You're going to stay? Even though you won?"

"Yeah! I mean, if you wanted someone around so bad that you had to use the rules of some made-up goofy contest to get them to stay, you must be pretty lonely."

"Oh," Aradia says. Jade touches her hand, fur against bone. "Girl," she begins a little hesitantly, "do you mind if I ask what this business you had left to wrap up in your world was? Excuse my prying, but--," Jade interjects with a 'oh shut up, silly, its fine', "--you seem a, a very interesting person. I should like to know more about you, if you'd like that, too." She'd maybe flush if she had either the skin or blood for it. As it is her skull is untouched, graying white, but she feels self-conscious all the same; has she forgotten how to talk beyond formalities of the job? Is the wall of communication sat between the living and the dead truly unbreachable, as her higher-ups have oft warned? Aradia's bones tense all over, but Jade hardly seems to notice; she leans in closer yet, cups the point of Aradia's jaw with her thumb and index finger, dauntless. There's a beautifully enthused look in her eyes.

"Look, okay, look--it's not really externally visible, but," Jade says, so quickly, tapping a finger against her nose, " _here_ , right -- do you know, really know, about human biology? Well, I do, and I can tell you it's damn boring, and honestly in many aspects not really that impressive, save for your obvious advantages -- opposable thumbs, that kind of thing, you know -- well, anyway, do you know what are great? Canines, oh man. That's the deal with the tail and the ears and --," she twitches both in turn, to signify, "-- now my nose too! Because, right, quick lesson: smelling works through these cell membranes known as the olfactory receptors, they're what picks up odor in the air, and they're in this thing called the epithelium and how much you have of _that_ is what decides how much exactly you can smell, and humans have abouuuut, mm, ten square centimetres? Whereas dogs have over ten times that! So what I've done is expand my epithelium so that it can hold more receptors and therefore I can smell _so much_ , god -- and I suppose it doesn't really matter here and now, but it's a question of principles, we'll say. I mean, what kind of a scientist would leave an experiment half-finished? I wouldn't and I _didnt_. Hah!"

Jade's laugh is everything like a bark. She sits back, gulps in-and-out a single deep breath, and folds her arms, looking exceptionally pleased with herself. Aradia can't say she understood a word of that and so she doesn't; they simply sit in a warm silence for a few moments before Jade opens her mouth once more. Looking out towards the black sky, she murmurs 'shouldve brought my equipment, this place looks fascinating' all absentminded, like the words had not even come to her consciously, and for the first time in a very long while, Aradia caves in and laughs.

**✝**

And so it goes: the ram and the dog, alone, together -- a strange pair but only strange enough. Otherworldy beings, for an otherwordly home.


End file.
